Scotland’s most inclusive business challenge kicked off yesterday with more than 1000 teams aiming to turn £1 into thousands during November.
Sir Tom Hunter, Wood Group chief executive Bob Keiller, and former CBI chief Lord Digby Jones are among the mentor backers of MicroTyco, which in its first year last November attracted 562 teams from schools, corporates and universities to raise more than £100,000.
The proceeds go to the WildHearts Foundation, which diverts them to micro-finance projects in 24 countries, a cause which has caught the imagination of Scottish schools.
Education Minister Michael Russell has said he wants to see the competition adopted by every school in Scotland, and the number of local authorities participating has risen from two to 10.
The 30 corporate participants include teams from City bank Morgan Stanley, London law firm Linklaters, and the Scottish offices of Deloitte, which won last year’s challenge by turning the £1 seed capital into an astonishing £19,008 in four weeks.
Teams are also entering from south of the Border, while new mentors include Lena Wilson, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, Colin Robertson, chief executive at Alexander Dennis, and Vets Now founder Richard Dixon.
Mick Jackson, founder of WildHearts and creator of the event, said: “To say the event has grown exponentially would be an understatement.” He said the amount raised by the best-performing school team had jumped from £4100 in the pilot project to more than £9500 in the first year.
The challenge has been adopted by Babson College of Boston, the world-leading entrepreneurship school, and three Scottish business schools.
Mr Jackson said Massachusetts Institute of Technology research showed the best-performing firms had a “transcendent purpose”, and this was what attracted top corporate teams to the challenge. For under-achieving youngsters, he said, the event had shown it could make a significant difference to their lives.
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